


Comfy and Easy to Wear

by mightyscrub



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Pokemon AU, actual fluff this time without angst lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 22:13:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7592284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mightyscrub/pseuds/mightyscrub
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Happy birthday, Cat!  Here is a ficlet for you.  It's a Jupiter family Pokemon AU??  The title of course refers to shorts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Comfy and Easy to Wear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thelonebamf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelonebamf/gifts).



Sunny’s overalls were sagging with the weight of the Pokemon egg in her front pocket; she kept having to yank up the straps at her shoulders to keep from flashing the top of her entirely boyish boxers to passersby. This was in stark contrast to the blue flower barrettes in her hair, shining in carefully tailored prettiness.

She was in a hurry, half watching where she was going and half watching the egg, her thumbs hooked protectively in her pocket.

She turned a corner haphazardly, nearly taking out a hedge, and entered the small garden in front of the Pokemon Daycare.

David was there. “Watch it, you’re gonna run into a wall,” he told her. He was on his knees with dirt-encrusted knuckles, pulling up wild Oddish out of the tulip bulbs he’d just planted yesterday. 

She paused at the vegetable garden to pick one of the last wilted green beans for a snack. “Is Hal busy?” she asked.

“Is he ever not?” But David grinned at her quickly around a stubby cigarette. He had a bandana soaking the sweat at his forehead (never one for sunhats) and was holding an Oddish by its leaves. In the past this Oddish might have disliked this rough treatment, but by now it was a frequent visitor here and also David was absently tickling it with his other hand, making it smile and chirrup and wag its little blue legs. “He could use a distraction probably. Tell him I sent you if he puts up a fight.”

Sunny found time in her Hurrying to go over to David and pluck the cigarette out of his mouth, replacing it with a green bean. He made a sour face. Nevertheless he hooked a finger in her overalls pocket and peered inside.

“That egg’s looking real healthy,” he said.

She beamed. “You think it’ll hatch soon?”

“It’s hard to say.”

“I hope it does.”

“Don’t get your hopes up too high for a cute one to hatch. There’s a lot of Pokemon out there.”

“Yeah, but there’s a lot of cute ones!”

He smiled at her, a smaller proud smile, and chucked the Oddish playfully across the garden. It went off gallivanting.

She kissed his cheek with a loud mwah and then continued her Hurry into the Daycare.

The Pokemon Daycare on Route 15 had only recently opened, and it was a somewhat unorthodox business. Sunny’s adoptive fathers were both highly experienced with Pokemon—in fact, David had been League Champion at one point before retiring to help Hal with his research—but nothing really prepared anyone for keeping a houseful of random Pokemon peaceful. It was a cheerful place, with blue furnishings and many corkboard-pinned Pokemon drawings and photographs submitted by the community along the walls. However, it was not uncommon for things to always be in a state of Slightly Awry. Today, the expected chaos came in the form of a Nidoking that was staying the night and had an irrational fear of bathtubs. The seasonal employee Raiden had laid out an incredible amount of towels all up in the living room and was bodily scrubbing the Nidoking right there with a hitherto unused toilet brush. The Nidoking, at least, seemed happy.

The other Pokemon tenants were running around or relaxing, climbing the fixtures that weaved up the walls and across the ceiling (Hal’s invention) or playing with pieces of the Daycare’s massive army of toys. Somehow in all the rowdiness, Hal was still concentrating at his computer in the corner.

He was always a little frazzled-looking, today in a lumpy turtleneck. He was sitting on the floor by the outlet with his laptop on his knees and a coffee at his side in a Clefairy mug.

“Hal!” Sunny said, coming to stand in front of him.

He glanced up with a reflexive but harried smile. “Hey… Did the egg hatch?”

“Not yet!”

“I’m a little busy right now, but…”

“Dave sent me.”

“Oh… well in that case…” Hal’s brow furrowed, but Sunny was already leading into the conversation she wanted to have before he could question this loophole she and David had long ago discovered.

“Did you do the math?” she asked.

Hal sighed and with some clicking opened up a different tab of previous work. He pushed up his glasses and read.

“Your Pokemon egg is _technically_ most likely a Rattata, but that’s only at 15% probability,” he said. “There were a lot of lady Pokemon here that day…”

It wasn’t uncommon for Pokemon to lay eggs at the Daycare, but normally they could determine who the parents were by general proximity. Sunny’s egg was different. It had just… appeared. Nobody knew what it was, none of the customers wanted to claim it, and so her fathers had passed it on to her for safekeeping.

For Sunny, it was an honor. It was her first real project as a novice Pokemon breeder, and when the egg hatched it would also be her very first Pokemon.

No doubt Hal had done all the probability equations under the sun to get them one step closer to guessing what species would hatch, but he was reading her another dead end. Her patience was running low due to excitement.

“Thanks…” she said, a little disappointed, and Hal reached out a leg to prod her shoe with his socked foot consolingly.

“You’re taking good care of it. It should hatch any day now,” he told her. “I’m sure—“

At that moment Raiden let out a squawk as the Nidoking he was pseudo-bathing rolled over and patted itself with eager Scrub My Belly! motions. The only problem was the Nidoking had rolled over directly onto Raiden’s foot.

“Whoops!” said Hal, which he said a lot in situations like this. He scrambled to his feet, setting his laptop aside and nearly kicking over his coffee mug except that Sunny saved it just in time. “Thank you, Sunny… I’ll take a look at the egg after this!”

“It’s ok, Hal,” she said. “I’m gonna take it for another spin.”

Long walks were good for hatching Pokemon eggs, so she set the Clefairy mug on a table and hiked up her overalls again, heading back outside to do some laps around Route 15.

x

That evening, after Raiden had limped home in the arms of his girlfriend and the Pokemon had all gone to sleep (the Nidoking blissfully flopped across two beds), Hal and David sat on the front steps to watch the sunset together, a nightly ritual.

It was cooling into fall, a strange breezy between-seasons evening. One of the wild Oddish from before was already digging at the tulip bed with its feet and shimmying its bulbous bottom in the soil, raring to bury itself again. David watched it irritably but was too muscle sore and peaceful to bother with it. He sat with a handful of green beans, chewing the one in his mouth slowly, letting it dangle from his lips like a poor mimicry of a cigarette. He and Hal sat closely, shoulder to shoulder, knees bumping. Any moment now Sunny would return from her walk, always diligent about curfew. Their minds were in the same place…

“There’s a 5.3% chance Sunny’s egg is a dud,” Hal said.

“No, there’s no chance,” David murmured. “An egg with a trainer like that can’t be a dud.”

Hal smiled, resting his cheek against David’s shoulder, glasses going slightly askew. “That’s not how eggs work, Dave.”

“Faith has a place in it too, I think.”

David believed what he was saying, an unexpected optimist at times.

“Well, I guess you would know more about Pokemon training than I would,” Hal said.

At first, Hal had been adamantly against David giving up his League career to start this Daycare with him. Back then he hadn’t understood. Back then it seemed like David was giving up his dream to support Hal’s failing Pokemon breeding research, throwing away his own success to bolster Hal’s shoddy dream instead. But slowly he had learned that was not the case. David would always love Pokemon battling on some level, but it had also become work, stress, something he couldn’t escape from. Giving it up to work with Hal instead was not altruistic at all.

David’s dream had simply changed.

Lately, that desperate scramble to achieve something had dimmed for Hal too. They had a daughter now. They had this place and each other. Somewhere along the line, that had become enough. Everything else was bonus.

“She’ll be a trainer to be reckoned with,” David said. His free hand came to cup the back of Hal’s neck lightly, thumbing circles under his hair.

Hal hmmed in agreement.

For a moment, they were quiet as the sky dimmed orange.

Then suddenly a cry erupted from out on Route 15. 

They both recognized the voice and reacted immediately. David was faster, running at full athletic speed, green beans forgotten. He was halfway down Route 15 in an instant, a curving lightly forested path, and could have run the whole length without losing speed except he spotted exactly who he was looking for huddled in the grass beside the road.

Sunny was on her knees, she seemed ok, no obvious injuries and—

She glanced up at him with a huge toothy smile. In her lap, the Pokemon egg was… wiggling? “It’s hatching!” she declared.

Hal finally caught up, still in just socks, having to wilt with his hands on his thighs to catch his breath.

“Sunny, are you ok?” he wheezed.

“It’s hatching,” David told him, and Hal immediately perked up (breathlessly).

All eyes were on the egg in Sunny’s lap, as its wiggling continued, and finally small cracks began to spread across its surface. A small chink of shell went flying, and a little yellow eye appeared beneath, squinting and rolling… Sunny hunched over so her face was in this little one’s vision and their eyes met.

“Hello little one…” she said, the excitement and happiness brimming on her face.

She helped with her own small fingers as more pieces of shell fell away, and then finally with a great flop a Pokemon came spilling out into the grass.

It was an Ekans, small and coiling in on itself, blinking dazedly.

“Not a cute one,” David said.

“What are you talking about?” Sunny was blinking back tears and both her fathers were alarmed before realizing they were tears of happiness. “He’s the _cutest_!”

She scooped up the little bundle of confused purple loops and held him to her chest. The baby Ekans continued to experimentally slither, wrapped his tail around one of her hands and pressing his head up under her chin like a gaudy piece of jewelry.

“Ekannssss,” he said in a tiny voice.

“I’m Sunny,” said Sunny.

Sunny grinned up at her fathers. Hal had just about the same excited expression on his face, and David had a small but entirely honest smile.

“Let’s get Ekans home,” Hal said, pushing up his glasses. “Before it gets too cold out. Ekans are cold-blooded, you know.”

Sunny gently placed the little Ekans in her overalls pocket for warmth, his head lolling out to snoot the air curiously, and her little family started back to the Daycare with their new addition.

Sunny walked quickly, still excited, wanting to introduce Ekans to his new home, and talking animatedly down at him in her pocket, introducing herself at length, all her interests and pastimes.

David and Hal walked a few paces behind, shoulder to shoulder until David’s hand came to slide into Hal’s.

It was a good night.


End file.
